I have had this lens for 6 months now and have used it a lot. The main thing I can say is that it is versatile. It is my carry round lens! Yes it may be heavy but it has a comfortable grip to carry it. The 500mm is very nice to use however it is very soft at this range. The softness starts to come in around 350mm, but above 400 it deteriorates rapidly. If you stop down it does improve but stopping down an already slow f/6.3 at 500mm means you really need to bump up the ISO or be in very sunny conditions. That said, I would still definitely recommend it unless you want to be selling your images. I will be sad to see my Bigma go but I need to sell it to get my 300m f/2.8 ...